


Fresh Pheluvian Mushroom Tea

by Your_Chrome_Horse_Diplomat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Awkward Crush, F/M, Fluff, Gossip, Mother Allura, Pidge is an awkward bean, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12333540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Your_Chrome_Horse_Diplomat/pseuds/Your_Chrome_Horse_Diplomat
Summary: "Loved this! Sweet, fluffy pre-Shidge via Pidge and Allura bonding-- thank you for a wonderful read! :D" - Annie C.Pidge and Shiro have been acting terribly awkward, and Allura thinks she knows the reason why. There's only for one thing to do - for the sake of them both, for the sake of the team, for the sake of the Entire Universe: A good ol' gossip session over a piping hot cup of tea.





	Fresh Pheluvian Mushroom Tea

1

“Paladin. I expect you already know why I called you here.”

Princess Allura took a sip of from her steaming cup and leaned back into the chair. Her crystal eyes batted to the door for just a moment, before going back to the drink. Pidge rubbed the back of her head, as if hoping to dislodge some good ideas.

“Eh… is this because of the crash?”

“Yes Pidge, it’s because of the crash,” the Princess replied. Her voice had something other than its usual sweetness in it, and it made Pidge nervous. “I think it’s high time we had a talk.”

Pidge stood in place just in the doorway, unsure. Normally, when she walked into a room, she would find some cosy corner to sit in, or find something to fidget with. This, however, was not a normal room to be in. This was Princess Allura’s personal sanctuary. As it was, Pidge stayed frozen in half-stance by the door, with her helmet clumsily under one arm.

The Princess smiled at her, but it was not a smile that put her at ease.

“Why don’t you sit down, Pidge? Come here, next to me.”

Allura gestured to an angular, gleaming white piece of furniture which looked almost just like a chair. Pidge approached it with the sort of slow, controlled steps one took to sneak up on a carnivorous Space-Lizard. She looked at Allura warily, who nodded with a suspiciously sweet smile. Pidged looked back at the door, accepted that this was her last chance to dart away, and then sat down.

Allura smiled again and set down her cup. She parted her lips for an inward breath. Before she could begin scolding, Pidge piped up to intercept the incoming lecture.

“I’m sorry I crashed the Lion earlier,” she blurted out. “I hope Lance’s leg isn’t too sore. I just wanted to try out the improvements to the Lion’s boosters I salvaged off that RoBeast yesterday. Or, from the last planet we were at, anyway – saying “day” doesn’t really make sense since we’re in space, but we keep saying “day”, have you noticed that? But the whole thing was my fault, I hope I didn’t get Shiro in trouble, it’s just that…”

Allura held up a hand and Pidge let her words trail off. She was rambling, she knew. If nothing else, the Princess had just saved her from going red and wheezing from a bad case of run-on sentences.

“Pidge,” she said with a tinkle of laughter. “Slow down. I’m not here to give out to you.”

“You’re… not?”

“No. I know full well you didn’t mean to do any harm – and don’t worry, Lance’s leg should be fully repaired in no time.”

Pidge let out a major sigh of relief. “Oh good,” she said.

“In fact,” Allura said, “I’m hoping I can help repair more than just Lance’s leg.”

Pidge frowned. Her glasses slipped down her suddenly winkled nose, and she pushed them back up.

“What do you mean?” she said. “Did the Lions damage a part of the ship?” Her eyes flew open wide at the thought, and she jumped to her feet. Her glasses slipped again. “I promise I’ll fix it, straight away!”

Allura raised her hand again. “The ship is fine, Pidge. Sit down, there’s no reason to worry. I’m talking about repairing something much more valuable – the unity of Team Voltron.”

Pidge lowered herself back onto the chair-thing. Allura beamed at her for a moment. Pidge smiled uncertainly back. Allura took another sip of her drink. Pidge watched her, and waited for her to explain what she meant. Allura noticed her watching and raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, would you like a cup?” she offered. “It’s quite nice. Fresh Pheluvian Mushroom Tea, very healthy.”

Pidge’s stomach rolled at the idea. “It sounds lovely, but I had some for lunch,” she lied. “What did you mean by repairing Team Voltron?”

Allura smiled again, a strange, knowing smile that made Pidge nervous. “Well,” she said, setting her cup back down and crossing her arms. “You know that as Princess, it’s my job to pay attention to how my Paladins are doing. To make sure they’re okay, both as a team and as individuals.”

“Okay,” Pidge nodded.

“And that as part of that, I sometimes have to pry into what you might consider, well…” The Princess frowned and seemed to search for a word. “Let’s say, personal matter. Anything that might stop my Paladins working as a team.”

Pidge felt her heart flutter a little. “Right,” she nodded.

“And of course, in order to work together and form Voltron, my Paladins need to have absolute understanding and openness among one another.”

Pidge’s heart was now drumming quite a bit faster than normal. “That all seems to make sense,” she admitted.

Allura gave her another sympathetic smile. “I’m glad we’re on the same page,” she said. She paused for a minute, frowned, and very nearly seemed to chew her lower lip. Then, she stood up from her chair and moved to Pidge’s side.

“Pidge,” she said, putting a hand on her armoured shoulder. “You know I’ve said before that if there’s anything you ever want to tell me – anything – that you can, don’t you?”

“Ehhhh, yes,” Pidge said, involuntarily scooting away from the Princess down the chair. Her heart was definitely doing over-time now. “I do remember you saying that.”

“Well, is there anything at all you’d like to tell me now?” she asked. She examined her with those shining crystal eyes. “Maybe anything about Shiro?”

Pidge felt her heart do a backflip, and she leaped out of the chair.

“About Shiro? What, why would I have something to tell you about Shiro? Nothing, nothing at all, nope, nothing.” She let out her best fake laugh and rubbed the back of her head. “Why, you know all about Shiro, just as well as I do. Great leader. Metal arm. Cool hair, fabulous eyebrows… always kind, always gives good advice... you know, always looks out for me…”

Pidge almost got lost in describing Shiro, until she saw a thin smile breaking on Allura lips. She snapped out of it, and felt her face flush red immediately.

“Don’t feel embarrassed!” Allura said, giggling. “There’s no reason to be that way. Though I see that the Mice reported truthfully - you’ve got something of a crush on Shiro.”

“That’s not true!” Pidge lied, trying to sound aghast. “We’re just teammates.”

“You spend a lot of time together, I understand,” Allura said. “You wouldn’t be the first two Paladins to develop feelings for each other. Your minds are connected, after all - you know each other better than almost anybody!” She laughed again. “I imagine that is why your two Lions collided earlier today – you were both focusing too much on keeping your thoughts hidden, and not enough on using your thoughts together.”

“That’s… not true,” Pidge said weakly, her fists half-clenched. She quickly ran back through what Allura had said to find something to argue back with. Her mind traced over the details like over the schematics for an ingenious machine, when a detail snagged her brain and caught her.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you say… we were both doing it?”

Allura’s smile widened into something like a grin. “Why, yes, I did.”

Pidge focused all her energy on keeping her voice and expression even. “So then… did the Mice say anything about Shiro feeling the same way?” She cleared her throat a little bit to keep the wobble out of her voice. “Just out of professional interest, of course, so I could speak to him, team-member to team-member, and tell him that-“

“I believe he feels the same way,” Allura said.

“Really?!” Pidge said, leaping out of her chair once more. This time her glasses slid straight off the end of her nose and tumbled to the ground, where they bounced along the floor with a clatter. Pidge’s excited hopping came to a quick end as she went searching for them. She found them, slapped them back onto her face and tried to snap back into a natural pose. “Why, eh, do you think that? Has he said something?”

“He hasn’t needed to. It’s been quite obvious,” Allura said. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprise if your fellow Paladins have noticed a thing or two.”

Pidge felt her face reddening by the second.

“Notice? How could they have noticed anything? I mean, if, hypothetically, I did have some kind of a “crush” on Shiro… hypothetically….”

“Of course,” nodded the Princess.

“Well then, I would barely have been able to talk to Shiro, let alone do anything worth noticing! I mean, we still work together and he still looks out for me, yes, and he’s still the first person to help when something I’m working on falls on me or explodes, but…”

“Yes?” encouraged the Princess, leaning forward eagerly.

“But well, ever since I noticed that I was feeling this way I’ve barely been able to talk to Shiro without nearly forgetting how to speak. And Shiro has been acting so strange and awkward lately… I mean just yesterday, I asked him to fetch me my Stabilizing Flarge-Hammer, and when he handed it to me, his hand touched mine and he dropped it like it shocked him! Which I know it didn’t, because I hadn’t even connected the power cables to my gloves yet. It’s just too confusing – I’ve looked through the ships’ lessons on body language and communication, but I can’t find anything to explain this.” Pidge paused for a moment, and then added “All of this hypothetically, of course.”

The Princess, who had been leaning ever closer with every word, had now leaned so far forward that her tiara was almost touching Pidge’s glasses. Pidge snapped back to attention to see her face beaming at her from mere centimetres away. She yipped with a start and jumped back, nearly tipping over the edge of the chair.

“Pidge, I think it’s very obvious what’s going on,” the Princess said, once Pidge’s heart-rate came back down a bit. “You’re both experiencing feelings for each other, but neither of you want to admit it. So, you’re acting awkwardly.”

“Are you sure?” Pidge asked, sceptically but hopefully.

“Very,” the Princess said, certainly. “And I know exactly the thing to do. You need to tell Shiro how you feel, and as soon as possible. If this goes on any longer, who knows what might happen – one Lion crash is more than enough for me.”

“Well, maybe that’s true, but-“

“No maybes about it,” the Princess said firmly. “You need to deal with this immediately. That’s why I’m going to fetch Shiro this instant.”

Before Pidge even had a chance to protest, Allura was on her feet and walking off towards another room. Feeling alarm bells pounding in her head – or maybe that was just her heart again - Pidge leapt to her feet and raced to stop her.

“Wait, wait, wait!” she called, but she was too slow.

The Princess was out through the door, which shut behind her. Pidge heard the hiss as the door locked. No amount of yelling at or desperate hammering on it would change its mind.

In the seconds that followed, Pidge’s mind presented her with two choices. The first choice was to sit down, take a deep breath and think about what she wanted to say to Shiro. The second choice was to zip around the room in a blind panic looking for any devices or parts she could use to open the door and intercept Allura.

Since even approaching the first option sent waves of ice-water through Pidge’s veins, naturally she took the Second. So, when Allura returned moments later, conspicuously alone, she found her room reduced to rubble and scrap. Pidge was half way through connecting a table-lamp to a cleaning bot before she even noticed.

“Oh,” she said.

She looked down at the pile of electronics in her hands and hid them quickly behind her back. “Where, ah… where’s Shiro?” she said, trying to sound innocent.

Allura looked firmly unimpressed, but didn’t let it into her voice.

“He’ll be here in a moment,” she said. “But first, I imagined that you would need some preparation before you told him how you feel. I had hoped that maybe you would have used the last few moments for that, but…” She looked around the room, glaring particularly at her half-disassembled lamp. She shook her head. “So, I’ve had an idea. How about… a practice run?”

From behind her back, Allura revealed a helmet. A black helmet. Shiro’s helmet. With a grin she lowered onto her head and popped down the visor. Pidge was not impressed.

“That doesn’t make things any easier,” Pidge said. “If anything, that makes things even more awkward.”

“Wait a minute,” Allura told her. She held up a hand, and Pidge waited.

The Princess closed her eyes and let her face relax, but for a slight frown as she seemed to concentrate on something. Gradually, as Pidge watched, she started to grow. Her shoulders widened, her skin changed tone, her jawline became stronger, and before Pidge had even fully noticed, Allura looked had transformed into Shiro.

At least, that was, until she spoke.

“You see?” she said, in a voice that was still very much the Princess’. “You forget that Alteans have the ability to change our shape as needed. It’s not a perfect transformation, of course, which is why Shiro will be keeping his helmet on for the next little while, but still.” Allura crossed her arms – her now, significantly thicker arms – and leaned against the wall in a clumsy impersonation of Shiro’s pose. “What do you think?” she asked.

Pidge was having difficulty speaking.

“I think it’s… very, very strange,” she answered after a struggle. Her eyes wandered admiringly, taking in the figure posing before her. Her head realised fully that this was the Princess she was looking at, but all her eyes saw were Shiro, and the feelings that was unleashing made her feel very, very conflicted. “So does this mean Shiro – the real Shiro, I mean – isn’t coming?” she asked.

The Princess waved away the question. “This will just have to do,” she said. She re-folded her arms. “Now, go on. Imagine I’m Shiro – tell me how you feel.”

“Really?”

“Really. Go on. Now.”

“Ehh….”

Suddenly on the spot, Pidge went fishing for something to say and came up with nothing. From her mind she was receiving resounding silence. Not even the crickets. “Em, hey Shiro. How are… you?” she said. Her words trailed off awkwardly, followed by a nervous laugh to cover the silence.

Even under the visor, Pidge could see the Princess scowling. Pidge shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is just too… weird. I don’t know where to start. I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

“That’s okay!” the Princess said, putting out her hands reassuringly. “Here, I’ll start. Ahem!” She straightened her back and settled into Shiro-pose. She cleared her throat and shut her eyes in concentration. “Hello Pidge,” she intoned, audibly straining to lower her voice. “Allura told me that there was something you wanted to talk about.”

Pidge supressed the smile threatening to break. “Eh, yes, Shiro,” she answered, trying to sound serious.

“What is it?” the Princess asked, gruffly.

“It’s… em…” She again found nothing to say. The Princess gestured for her to keep going.

“It’s… your eyebrows.”

“What about them?”

“Well, they’re… nice.”

“Oh,” the Princess said, her own voice breaking back through in surprise. She cleared her throat and put back on Shiro’s. “Well, thank you, Pidge, that’s very nice.”

“Em… no problem.”

“Good,” the Princess answered.

“Yes,” Pidge said. “It is good.”

“Very” the Princess said.

“Yes,” Pidge said.

“Good,” said the Princess.

Pidge sighed. “I’m sorry, Princess, but this just isn’t working. It’s just not the same. It’s too awkward. Which is probably how it would actually be if you were Shiro, now that I think about it.”

The Princess gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, before steeling herself and standing upright. “Well, I’m not giving up yet,” she said. “I know - what if you gave me some pointers? A few tips on how I can be more… Shiro!”

Pidge jumped back up onto the couch where she sat cross legged. Part of her cursed the Alteans and their height for all building such tall furniture. Once she was in position, she shrugged and said “If you want. If you think it will help, I can try my best.”

“Good,” beamed the Princess. “Start wherever you want.”

Pidge put her hand to her chin and thought. “Well…. for a start, the way you patted my shoulder could do with some improvement,” she said.

“How so?” asked the Princess.

“Well, Shiro would usually use his left hand to do that. He only really uses his metal hand when he’s not thinking, or if I catch him off guard. Also, you need to be less firm - Shiro is usually softer, like he’s holding back a little bit.”

Allura nodded and sat down beside her again. She leaned forward eagerly, like a student taking notes. “Go on,” she said.

“Well….” Pidge said, leaning back and smiling a little. “The voice as well.”

“You can’t expect me to impersonate his voice perfectly,” Allura protested. “Even I have limits.”

“Oh yes, of course,” said Pidge. “But even so, you…” Her eyes sparked suddenly with an idea. “Actually, how much can you shape-shift? I mean I know you can make yourself taller or wider, but can you alter your vocal chords? What about age – can you make yourself look younger? Where does the extra weight come from? Does it take a lot of...”

“Focus, Pidge,” the Princess interrupted, holding up one hand. “One thing at a time. Focus on Shiro for the moment,” Allura said.

“Princess, I’m having trouble focusing on anything that’s not Shiro,” Pidge said. “That’s the whole reason we’re here.”

The Princess smiled sympathetically, but refused to let her get side-tracked again. “So Shiro’s voice?” she prompted.

“Yes, yes. It’s not just that his voice is deeper, it’s the tone he uses. Shiro isn’t normally that serious, unless it’s something really bad. He’s softer. Like he’s telling us what to do, but he’s not commanding us, if you know what I mean. “

“Okay,” the Princess answered. “I… think I’m following.”

“Oh, and the way his mouth looks is important too,” Pidge continued. “It’s not as serious as you make it look. It sort of… bends, a little. Like there’s a smile there, but he’s not smiling. But he definitely could be smiling.”

The Princess’ head was slowly turning to one side as Pidge spoke. Pidge barely noticed. She was now leaning so far back that she was almost looking at the ceiling, and speaking through an incredibly goofy smile.

“Maybe some if this is just me imagining things, though,” she admitted.

“Maybe,” the Princess agreed. “Or maybe they’re things that Shiro only does when he’s with you.”

An excited, nervous laugh escaped Pidge and she almost lost the ability to speak again.

“Of course, I wouldn’t be able to know that. I would have to do some kind of experiment to prove it. I’d need a control - some way to see him while he was with other people, and then some good way to compare that to when he’s with me. Then there’s a problem of bias, because I’m hardly an impartial observer. ”

“We do have cameras throughout the ship,” the Princess suggested. Though she still looked like Shiro, she had settled fully back into her own pose. “Though I’m not so certain that our cameras are equipped to pick up invisible smiles.”

Pidge laughed. She sat back up straight and looked at the door. She stared at it for several long seconds and, once she was sure it wasn’t likely to open, leaned in closer to Allura.

“Allura… Can I tell you something?” she said.

“Of course, Pidge,” the Princess answered, scooching up the couch closer to Pidge. “You know that.”

“You have to promise you won’t tell the others –and especially not Shiro,” Pidge continued in hushed tones.

“I promise,” the Princess agreed. She leaned in eagerly and lifted the helmet off. Underneath, Pidge saw she had shifted back to her own face. “What is it?”

“I actually did use the cameras to watch Shiro, once or twice,” Pidge said, supressing a slightly-but-not-really guilty grin.

“Pidge!” the Princess exclaimed, her eyes widening.

“Only for a little while,” she explained, throwing up her hands. “And I didn’t watch him while he was in private, only when he was polishing his armour or inspecting his Lion. I just wanted to see him, you know, being himself.”

“Surely you see him being himself all the time?”

“Not exactly,” Pidge said. “I see something close to it. Most of the time he’s putting on an act. He’s being the Team Leader, the serious version of himself that you imitate. It’s only when he doesn’t know I’m watching, or when there’s nobody else around that I get to see the Shiro underneath – the one who doesn’t know everything, the one who isn’t worrying about the Team, or worrying about me, but just -”

Speaking so directly about her feelings for Shiro, Pidge suddenly realised she had forgotten to take a break to breathe. Her breath ran out and she was forced to rather abruptly put a stop to her sentence. She gasped her lungs back into shape, aware that her face had probably gone the shade of rhubarb again.

The Princess’ expression still looked slightly scandalized. “How do you even have access to that footage?” she asked. “The feed from those cameras goes directly to the bridge.”

“Oh, it was easy,” Pidge said. She adjusting her glasses with something like a smirk. Trying to navigate her feelings for Shiro might risk choking her, but technical details she could absolutely talk about.

“The feed goes along these really old-fashioned cables throughout the ship; you can get to them from the access panels. If you find which cable you need, you can divert the feed into one of the monitors in the other rooms. It’s very simple, actually.”

“Really, it’s that simple?” the Princess asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh yes, incredibly basic,” Pidge said.

The Princess’ eyebrow stayed standing at attention until Pidge got the hint.

“If you were the kind of person who wanted to do that, of course,” she added.

“Okay, Pidge,” she said. “When was the last time you hijacked the cameras like this?”

“Well…..pretty recently,” Pidged answered.

“How recently is ‘pretty recently’?” pressed the Princess.

“As in, in the last… couple of days.”

“So, two days ago, then?” the Princess asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well no… maybe more recently than that.”

The Princess leaned forward. “So that means yesterday?” she said.

“Maybe more like today.”

The Princess’ eye twitched ever so slightly. “Pidge,” she said. “Were you spying on Shiro just before I called you here?”

Pidge blinked innocently through her glasses. “I might have been.”

Allura let her face fall into her hands. Pidge jumped up in her chair to defend herself.

“Again, it isn’t like he was in his room or anyting,” she said. “He was just in the equipment bay. He was checking his armour for scratches. I could just as easily watched him from the doorway.”

The Princess looked up at her, then stood up from her chair and paced with her arms folded. She hmm-ed.

“Well,” the Princess said, standing up and folding her arms. “I can’t condone spying on your teammates without their knowledge but… I’m impressed. That shows an impressive knowledge of the ship’s layout.”

“Actually its only very basic stuff,” Pidge said. “Very simple, anybody could do it.” She smiled at herself, then rubbed the back of her head. “So, em, I’m not in trouble for that, right? Spying on Shiro, I mean?”

The Princess walked back and forth in front of Pidge with her arms folded, clearly thinking to herself. She put one hand to her chin and hmm-ed. Finally, she turned back to Pidge with only the faintest trace of a smile.

“Well, I suppose it would be unfair to say you were in trouble, since you didn’t mean any harm. That said, the privacy of your teammates is very important. On the other hand, knowing how to divert the cameras might be a very important piece of information to have one day. So, how about this: If you show me how it works, and promise to stop interfering with the ship’s cameras to spy on Shiro, then you’re not in trouble at all. Sound fair?”

Pidge nodded. “Sounds fair to me.” 

She jumped up, helmet in hand, to leave. Allura held up a hand.

"And Pidge, one more thing?" 

"...sure?" 

"Talk to Shiro. Before one of you blows a whole in the ship." 

Pidge laughed nervously. "I'll try, Allura." 

"I'm sure you will. I might just be watching." 

Allura smiled, and sat back on her not-quite-a-chair as Pidge left the room. With a grin, she took a sip of her tea, and decided to see about accessing that video feed.


End file.
